


Rose Petals

by traintobusan



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Canon Universe, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, also my first attempt of hanahaki disease, my mind is literally blank for tagging this, no deaths i promise, uhhhhh, why do i suck at endings that dont involve someone dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 06:21:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20943755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traintobusan/pseuds/traintobusan
Summary: He loves me, he loves me not.Hanahaki Disease occurs in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings (romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough), or when the victim dies.





	Rose Petals

It hurts.

It’s the middle of the night, 2:47am to be exact, when Wooyoung wakes up unable to breathe. He’s on the couch of the dorm, he must have fallen asleep watching a movie with Yeosang earlier, when the feeling wakes him, causes him to sit up so abruptly that his head spins. 

It hurts so bad.

His lungs feel like they’re being squeezed with the tightest force imaginable. He can barely inhale, like the air is getting stuck in his throat, and his chest feels full, and everything feels out of his capability. 

He doesn’t at all know what to do, or what’s happening to him, but it’s terrifying, to say the very least. 

Had he practiced too much that day? Had he done something to cause this?

All at once, he feels something within his throat, a cough erupts from it, and another, then half a dozen more, until everything seems to calm, and he feels like there’s air in his lungs again.

But there’s something in the palm of his hand, something hidden within the ball of his fist that wasn’t there before. And when Wooyoung moves his fingers, he’s expected to be greeted by blood, or something of the sort, that would make sense, surely. 

It’s dark, the only light that welcomed the male came from somewhere distant within the dorm, Wooyoung assumed Yeosang or one of the older members had left on for him in case he woke up and couldn’t quite find his way back to his room in complete darkness. 

The light is enough.

Enough for him to see what it is, the colour of the thin, soft subject waiting for him.

The petal of a rose. 

The disease is rare. It’s so rare that some believed it was a myth, so rare that it never even crossed Wooyoung’s mind as a possibility. 

He takes the petal between his fingers, runs his fingertip along the surface. It’s real, not a bad dream, not a half-asleep, distanced from reality concoction of his mind. 

As soon as it sets in, registers in his mind what’s happening, panic overwhelms everything. He can’t let it happen, he just can’t. The blonde male is up in an instant, stumbling quickly to the bathroom as fast as he can without alerting the entirety of his sleeping group. He drops the petal into the toilet, flushes it, almost slams the door behind him. 

It’s gone. 

Never to be seen again.

It’s not the disease, he decides, it can’t be. 

He isn’t in love with anyone, anyway. That’s for sure.

“Wooyoung-ah!”

Wooyoung didn’t remember wandering back to his shared room with Yeosang and San, nor getting into bed, but when he opens his eyes, he surely finds himself looking to the bottom of Yeosang’s bunk, the view that gotten very boring, very quickly. 

He turns his head to see Hongjoong, squinting slightly at the leader for a moment.  
The younger then frowns, beginning to recall the earlier events. It had to have been a dream, surely. 

“Wooyoung-ah!” Hongjoong repeats, tugging at the other’s blankets when he seems to show the intention of sleeping more. “What’s gotten into you? We’re already late.”

Wooyoung gives a noise that’s somewhere between a groan and a hum of acknowledgement. If it had been a dream, then why does he still feel a distant comfort whenever he inhales?

He does, eventually get up, when Hongjoong brings in Seonghwa to lecture him about being late to their schedules, which Wooyoung knows all about of course, but still listens.

The beginning of the day feels like any other, except with the addition of the slight ache of his lungs, nothing he can’t ignore. He’s unusually quiet, enough for Mingi to notice, but it’s easy enough for him to shrug the other’s questions of it off, he’s just tired, didn’t sleep properly.

He can’t focus, not while he’s getting ready, not while he’s in the van with Yeosang beside him, complaining about how predictable the movie they’d watched had been, and how Wooyoung had fallen asleep not even twenty minutes in so he didn’t have anyone to point out the plot inconsistencies to. 

All he can think about is that stupid petal.

It’s not until he’s sitting in front of a mirror, while various staff and stylists busy themselves with his hair and makeup before their rehearsal, that his mind finds something else to think of. 

San.

The older is in the same situation, staff fussing over the positioning of his hair and the colour of his eye makeup, but he appears rather relaxed, eyes steady on the reflection ahead of him.

Wooyoung always thought San looked like a prince.

Maybe he’s staring, or just looking at the other’s reflection for all too long, because San seems to notice, and their eyes effortlessly connect in the mirror for a moment. 

It’s when San gives him a small smile that it begins to feel hard to breathe.

But he can barely acknowledge it, he’s being rushed out of his seat and in the direction of the stage with his group, voices all around him giving him instructions for the rehearsal, but he can’t seem to process anything.

It’s just one song, he’s rehearsed and performed dozens of times when he’s hurt.

But it’s different when he can barely breathe.

He’s in his position in no time, trying to focus on little things to steady himself and his breathing, the feeling of the stage beneath him, the secure grip of the microphone in his hand, the little hum coming from someone nearby, he thinks it’s Jongho. 

Wooyoung knows the choreography like he knows how to walk, but he feels lost within it. He can’t concentrate on where he’s supposed to be, his lungs feel full and his head aches and spins.

He tries, but he knows his members can tell something is off immediately, and probably the staff monitoring their performance too. He’s missing steps, making moves too slowly, barely able to keep his balance, let alone his correct positioning on the stage. 

The others do help, of course, the best they can, gently pushing him into his position, helping him when he appears lost, but they’re told since they’re trainees to not stop their performance unless necessary, even a rehearsal. 

It’s when San brings his arm around him to move him, he’s left his position too, Wooyoung realises, and mouths a question, something along the lines of asking him what’s wrong, that it becomes too much.

They’re not supposed to stop, he knows they know that, but San is already there when he drops to his knees, and then Seonghwa is, and then Yeosang, and after that he can’t really tell. 

He can feel them, the petals.

He can feel them in his lungs, in his chest and throat. They’re everywhere.

And it’s the worst pain he’s ever felt, worse than any injury from performing or practicing.

He can’t breathe.

“It hurts.” He chokes out, he feels a hand at his back, he hears rushed footsteps.

“Wooyoung, what hurts? Why does it hurt? Talk to me.” Seonghwa is beside him now, where San had been. He’d gone to get water for him, he’d heard Yunho say. Seonghwa is calm, Wooyoung can tell from the tone of his voice, like he knows what he’s doing. On his other side of him is Yeosang and Mingi, they’re talking quieter, to Hongjoong he thinks, but they’re more panicked, more alert.

Wooyoung shakes his head firmly, eyes squeezing shut. He can’t tell them, that’s not even a possibility. 

The moment he’s able to maintain the strength to stand and walk, he’s gone, making it very clear that he doesn’t need anyone to follow him, he’ll be back in a second, he promises. 

He’s lucky the bathroom isn’t far, because the moment he’s closed the door after himself he’s coughing, coughing so much he loses track of time, track of anything really. His hands are at the basin in the tightest grip imaginable, and when the coughing stops, when his eyes open, for a moment all that he can see is red. 

The rose petals, five, six, seven, he counts. 

And there’s blood.

It’s hard to notice at first, especially with blurred, shaky vision, against the already deep red surface, but it’s there, painting the beautiful petals.

Wooyoung remembers that roses are San’s favourite.

It takes a good fifteen minutes to convince his group that he can perform. And he can, he does. 

It’s hard, but after coughing up the collection of petals he feels better, at least for a few hours.

Dismissing the worries of his members is even harder. They want to know what’s wrong, what kind of injury or sickness he has, what happened during the rehearsal. He understands, and he’s grateful they worry, but he wishes they wouldn’t, not with this.

He promises he’s fine, or he will be soon enough. Eventually, they believe him.

He tries to get through their schedules, 

More importantly, he tries to avoid San throughout them.

Wooyoung doesn’t handle the realisation well. He knows he should tell San, or someone, anyone, as soon as it registers in his mind, but he can’t. He knows San doesn’t love him back.

There wouldn’t be petals if he did, after all.

It’s less than two weeks until he can’t perform anymore. It’s a few days later when he can’t participate in any of Ateez’s schedules at all. 

He considered it a miracle, that he’d been able to keep the petals so well disguised as just any other illness. It didn’t make the group any less worried. 

And even with the entirety of the group wanting to help him, he can’t take his mind away from San.

San, his best friend, his favourite person. The one he trusted and adored, would give up anything for. Why does it have to be him, causing him the most imaginable pain?

Why didn’t that stop Wooyoung from loving him?

It only gets worse. Everything gets worse. 

There’s more and more petals everytime, it hurts every inch of him more than the last. There’s more blood, painting the beautiful, painful petals. It doesn’t even come close to how much thinking of San hurts him.

It’s a month after the first petal that he thinks his time is almost up.

The group is out on a schedule, Wooyoung thinks it’s for a performance but he can’t remember for sure, he wasn’t paying much attention when Hongjoong told him.

He’s alone, not uncommon these days, back against the cool tile of the bathroom wall. Everything hurts. He’s used to that, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. 

He feels like he’s been coughing for hours, maybe he has. 

God, he hates roses. 

The petals are everywhere, there’s blood on his finger tips from touching them. 

He can’t bring himself to move away from the tortuous petals, moving is just going to make breathing harder. 

And then he sees it. 

A complete rose is waiting for him, amongst a pile of bloody petals. It’s beautiful, the flower, and Wooyoung can’t help but pick it up to admire it. 

He feels more in his lungs. 

A gorgeous garden waiting for him, taking up every inch of his lungs. Those perfect, bright red roses that San loved.

They’re not just petals anymore, they’re bloomed roses, thorns and all.

He loves San so much. He knows, but they keep telling him, the roses. 

There’s voices, distantly, then closer. They’re calling for him, his group, after what he can assume is them finding him not in his bed, or their couch or kitchen. 

He doesn’t remember leaving the door partially open, but he knows why he did. 

He can’t hide it anymore. 

It’s Yunho that pushes the door, that finds him, sees the petals. It’s Yunho kneeling beside him in an instant, trying to help him, but Wooyoung only wants San. 

He needs him, he decides, and he’s saying his name over and over, but he feels like his voice isn’t his own, it’s someone else’s, someone who’s far away. 

It feels like forever until San is there, Yunho doesn’t leave until he is, and he knows the rest of the group isn’t far away, but it was clear it was San he wanted, only San.

He thinks Yunho had warned him, because he’s not as surprised as he expected, he’s calm, or at least attempting to be.

“It hurts.” 

He’s spoken before San had the chance, and the older’s calm facade falls in an instant at the words. Wooyoung isn’t sure if San had taken his hand, or he’d done it himself, but he’s squeezing it tightly, the other’s touch is so soft, so warm.

“I know. You can get through this, Wooyoung.” San’s voice is so soft, Wooyoung barely recognises it. 

He shakes his head, he knows he can’t, he’s sure. It hurts too much, it’s too hard to breathe, he can’t.

“Here.” 

The older’s hand moves Wooyoung’s so it’s at his chest, his touch welcomed by San’s heartbeat. He feels it as if it’s his own, it’s faster than it should be, but he can’t blame him. At the same time, it’s steady, and Wooyoung wants to feel it, listen to it forever. 

“You feel it, right?”

Wooyoung nods faintly. 

San moves the male’s other hand to his own chest.

“And you feel your own?” As he speaks, he makes sure that Wooyoung’s hands remain at each of their chests, before he moves his finger to the younger’s chin, gently lifting it so their eyes would meet. 

Wooyoung nods again.

San nods too, and they stay that way for a while, until he speaks again.

“Are our heartbeats synced, Wooyoung?”

He doesn’t notice until San asks, but they are, and he feels as if the pair are one, in the simple moment. Maybe he’s just not as focused on it, but the pain feels lessened, all that he can really feel is their heartbeats. Again, he nods, slowly.

“Okay,” San pauses, watching Wooyoung. “Now focus on my breathing, try and get our own to sync up to mine too. You can do that.” He instructs, his tone was still soft, and it made Wooyoung’s heart feel like it might melt. 

And so he does, it takes a little longer than he expects, his lungs aren’t as eager to cooperate as he imagines, but it works, and he’s following San, with every inhale and exhale. 

“Wooyoung?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

His lungs don’t feel so full anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> i suck at happy endings i'm sorry, but i wanted this finished because wonderland drops in a few hours, so don't forget to stream!! 
> 
> [my cc! leave requests or feedback if you like](https://curiouscat.me/CHENJl)


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